Due to the innate flexibility and variation of pliable materials, automated processing of materials typically found in shoe uppers and other soft goods is difficult. Identifying various flexible components using automated systems and then performing operations upon any component has presented challenges. The inputs, such as a portion of an article of footwear, to a manufacturing process may lack conformity while the output of the process is generally desired to have conformity. Achieving conformity while taking into consideration variables of the input presents challenges as the manufacturing process scales such that a standardized operation that is universally applied to all inputs is not generally effective.